Bacteria play an important role in ecological processes in oil contaminated marine sediments. In this work, bacterial diversity studies with surface sediment samples from the NWGulf of Mexico were performed, two from continental shelf and two from upper slope. The bacterial communities seem significantly influenced by depth, distance from the shoreline, temperature, dissolved oxygen and aluminum. The most abundant Phylum Proteobacteria Gammaproteobacteria Deltaproteobacteria was , Class . However, Class , Order Desulfuromonadales Alteromonadales Gammaproteobacteria predominated in continental shelf and Order ( ) prevailed in the upper slope sediments. Many potential hydrocarbon degrading bacterial genera were identified, Desulfobulbus 71 of the assigned genera were associated to hydrocarbon degradation processes. The genera and Haliea Shewanella Fusibacter were confined to continental inner-shelf, while and were mostly detected in deeper sediments. The occurrence and abundance of putative hydrocarbon degrading bacteria in this area, could be indicative of an impacted zone caused by the presence hydrocarbons in the environment.

Ramsøe, A., van Heekeren, V., Ponce, P., Fischer, R., Barnes, I., Speller, C., Collins, M.J., 2020. DeamiDATE 1.0: Site-specific deamidation as a tool to assess authenticity of members of ancient proteomes. Journal of Archaeological Science 115, 105080.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440320300042 Contamination is a potential problem in the study of ancient proteins, either from prior handling of the sample, laboratory consumables, or cross-sample carryover from mass spectrometers. Recently, deamidation of glutamine has been proposed as a measure for assessing the degradation of ancient proteins. Here, we present deamiDATE 1.0, a method for the authentication of ancient proteins using measure of site-specific deamidation rates. We test this approach on shotgun proteomic data derived from bone collagen from modern, archaeological and extinct taxa. We further demonstrate how this method may be used to differentiate between modern contaminants and authentic ancient proteins using a case study from Neolithic dental calculus.

Ratheesh Kumar, C.S., Renjith, K.R., Joseph, M.M., Salas, P.M., Resmi, P., Chandramohanakumar, N., 2019. Inventory of aliphatic hydrocarbons in a tropical mangrove estuary: a biomarker approach. Environmental Forensics 20, 370-384.

https://doi.org/10.1080/15275922.2019.1657983 Aliphatic hydrocarbons in the sediments of the estuarine mangrove forests of Cochin region, Southwest coast of India were characterized to assess the sources of organic matter (OM) and to validate the effectiveness of the various geochemical indices to identify multiple OMsources and the complex geochemistry of these tropical coastal environments. The total concentration of the n-alkanes varied from 606.39 to 826.25?µg/g [dry weight (dw)] in mangrove sediments, to values between 230.10 and 287.67?µg/g in estuarine sediments. The n-alkane distribution in the study region indicated a strong odd over even predominance in both mangrove and estuarine sediments. Assessment using terrestrial OMindices such as Carbon Preference Index (CPI), Terrigenous Aquatic Ratio (TAR), and Terrestrial Marine Discriminant (TMD) suggested that a large fraction of OMin the mangrove sediments was derived from mangrove plant litter and a better preservation of mangrove OMin the sedimentary environment has occurred. These findings are supported by the higher content of total lipid, tannin, 13 and lignin, as well as by the depleted δ C values. Low ratios of CPI, TAR, and TMD at estuarine sites E2 and n E3 indicated a mixed origin of OM. Natural or biogenic indices such as natural - alkanes ratio (NAR), Σn - 16 alkanes/n-C , n-C /n-C , and LMW/HMW revealed that all the mangrove stations and the estuarine station E1 29 17 received OMfrom natural or biogenic sources, whereas a significant anthropogenic input was noticed for estuarine stations E2 and E3. Indices like Pr/Ph, Pr/n-C , Ph/n-C further confirmed the mixed nature of OM 17 18 accumulated under the anoxic environment.

Reid, L.M., Payne, J.L., García-Bellido, D.C., Jago, J.B., 2020. The Ediacara Member, South Australia: Lithofacies and palaeoenvironments of the Ediacara biota. Gondwana Research 80, 321-334.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1342937X19302862